I received a free review copy of this book and my thanks to the Publisher, the team of NetGalley and the author for the copy.

All views expressed in this review are my own and based on my reading of this book. Some of the initial comments were made as I progressed in this book and I have not tried editing them as it expresses my contiguous thoughts as I proceeded with my reading.

This is a non-fiction book focusing on efficiency in the quest for improving the bottom-line. The author, Brady Brim-DeForest draws from his own life experiences as a serial entrepreneur who has worked with brands.
My caveat to this review is that I love books which deal with business strategy, business processes and efficiency. My approach to this book was in trying to understand the process and understand its impact so that I could extract some learnings for use.

Brady has enough case studies and compelling stories to engross the reader in the book. As the book's name indicates he propounds the concept of smaller teams in business even for large spread businesses.
Going through the book for me it made sense for large organizations to work through smaller teams for greater maneuverability. Smaller groups working together focused on a common goal would always be way more efficient than a large team. There would be businesses that require large teams but one has to understand that larger groups requires large resources. Leaner organisations tend to react faster.

As Brady puts, "Nimble” is not a theoretical claim. I have seen countless examples of organizations achieving dramatic gains from a transformation to the teams model of working." He talks from experience and espouses the same with case studies which make the reading interesting.
One of the examples was with industry major Caterpillar, where he claims that use of his process in the supply chain logistics organization resulted in over a $ 1 billion savings. This takes this book from just a process book to the realms of a business manual.
The book marks out the seven points of improvement ranging from Increased productivity, Decreased Risk to the bottom line Money
each of which is self explanatory but explained in detail in the book.

I also felt that the flip side of investment in this concept would be the transition cost from heavy to lean and which would be one time cost and is mentioned in details in the book. The negative side from lowered production rates, amounts, loss in turnover, loss in growth all of which would be temporary but would impact business numbers and points which most business owners would require greater confidences in the presentations and significant improvement after a timeline.
As a business owner myself this was a point of concern because in a market which bucks and sways worse than a green horse the decision would be extremely difficult even for seasoned organizations. Markets tend to lose confidence when there are dips in turnovers and mass retrenchment but most of these points are well etched here and Brady does seem to have the answers.

I was able to grasp and appreciate the concept of betting on many horses to increase odds of winning which he alludes to when he talks about several small teams working on various parts of the puzzle and on various types of problems instead of brute force where all are working to solve a conundrum.

Another nugget that I was able to glean was Cross-Functionality. Teams which include a mix of generalists and specialists bringing fresh minds to problem-solving. Fresh in terms of approach which for me sounded very like the odd-man hypothesis that was propounded for fictional decision making.
At the heart of cross functionality is a successful team that has everything it needs to fully achieve its project mission. All decisions from hypothesizing to initial decisions all through till the generation of return on investment.

This has been something that has worked for me and my personal experience during projects has always been a leaning towards leaner and meaner work forces.
What worked for me in this book was that what I had learnt over time through trial and error over the last decade and a half was confirmed in toto by this book. My lean methodology had worked wonderfully with a high 57% reduction in some projects that nestle between industrial relations, PR and the not for profit sphere.

Maybe why I connected wonderfully with this book.

Tremendous and engrossing.